Wednesday, October 3, 2012

I will have two pieces in the final exhibition of the Waitakere Trust 2012 Art & Sculpture Awards.

The
Trusts Art and Sculpture Awards has been supported by the Waitakere
Trust for 26 years and is one of NZ’s longest running Art Awards and
well respected across the New Zealand arts community.Artists showcase their work in a
national competition forum, judged, awarded and exhibited over 10 days
at Corban Estate Arts Centre.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Korero is a collaborative exhibition illustrating a
fusion between visual art and poetry. 18 artists from various
disciplines, select from 18 carefully chosen poems on the theme of
conversation, to use as inspiration for their artwork.

This exhibition at Uxbridge Creative Centre, 35 Uxbridge Rd. Auckland is in memory of local poet Bernard Gadd. His son, David Gadd will present an award to what he considers to be the best piece of art.

Join us on opening night, 12 July from 6.30pm for a mulled wine and a vibrant and energetic evening of visual art and poetry readings.

As is often the case, it was a chance meeting with curator, Melissa Elliott that lead to the invitation to participate in this exhibition. There was some initial disappointment when I found out that the first poem to speak to me had already been claimed. Now, Boats by Peter Bland seems like such an obvious poem for me to respond to. I can't see why it didn't jump out at me immediately.

Unlike some of the other artists, I have not been in contact with the author of my poem, so it will be interesting to talk to Peter if he attends the show.

Vessel (detail). Chris Dennis 2012.

Vessel (detail). Chris Dennis 2012.

In deference to his copyright, I won't reproduce Peter's poem here (Maybe if he gives his permission, I'll put it up later). In the mean time you can read about him here ( wikipedia ) and find him in libraries and bookstores around the world.

Our Frozen Moment is an
atmospheric-based installation by Michaela Gleave, a large-scale
experiment in space, light and the possibilities that shape our
perception of the universe. Presented as a stage-like set, the viewer
is invited to step into a ‘field of stars’ as a mass of tiny droplets
spark briefly into existence before disappearing from view.

Our Frozen Moment references optical phenomena such as
‘prisoner’s cinema’, the atmospheric condition ‘diamond dust’, and
‘frozen’ stars thought to be fueled by dark matter. The installation
places the viewer at the centre of a universe, a performer in their own
theatrical set, their own unique presence in the space-time continuum
held up for view.

This project is supported by the Australia Council through the Visual Arts Board.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Michael Lett is pleased to present an exhibition of recent work by British artist Martin Creed. Creed’s varied artistic practice includes performance, sculpture, writing and painting. This exhibition, his second at the gallery, brings together a typically playful collection of recent work in a range of media. Creed’s interventions range from simple mark-making to immense installations and public performances, exploring scale and structure, and humorously transforming the obvious and everyday. A series of recent paintings record a process determined by Creed’s choice of materials and tools, combined with his use of simple rules. The resulting forms reveal the joy in decisionmaking in a world of ever-increasing complication. The exhibition will include both paintings on canvas and large scale wall paintings.Creed’s fascination with process also extends to the body. Human experience has been explored in works that record in/out, up/down etc. in the form of penetration, vomiting, defecating, and in the case of Work No. 1071, a silent black and white film included in the exhibition, a woman’s nipple slowly becoming erect. Other works will include a large photograph (Work No. 1096) of Orson and Sparky, the canine stars of a 2011 music video titled ‘Thinking/Not Thinking’. The video records the two dogs who are drastically different in scale, making their way across the screen at alternate intervals and timed to Creed’s backing vocals.Martin Creed was born in Wakefield, England in 1968. He won the Turner Prize in 2001 for Work No. 227: ‘The lights going on and off’. Recent exhibitions include; Martin Creed Plays Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2012; Artist Rooms: Martin Creed, Tate Liverpool, 2012; Mothers, Hauser & Wirth, London, 2011. Creed’s Work No. 1197: ‘All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes’, will be performed throughout the UK at 8am on Friday 27 July to celebrate the first day of the 2012 London Olympics.

Paper-jams looks sideways from that legacy to foreground those artists who address the page itself as a compelling context, rather than focusing on the content of the words c...ontained within. These works challenge the materiality of the page and the creative potential of its limitations to break through the conventional ways we absorb and present information. Influenced by the collages and cut-ups of cubism, dada, fluxus and pop, they explore paper as a rich surface to scrutinise or excavate.
Similarly, publications become objects with their own history, value and meaning, and a site not only of linguistic dexterity but also physical construction and craft. Their printing, distribution or design is revealed to have political implications, which artists amplify through processes of obliteration that puts pressure on supporting structures. This has impacted on the worlds of art, literature and music, where established methods for communicating ideas have been torn up to allow a more graphic or conceptual approach.
Now, in an age of online information and electronic tablets, where ‘anything’ is possible, the threatened extinction of the conventional book brings renewed poignance to the physical systems that have supported publishing since the invention of the codex and the printing press.

Sculpture has re-established itself as one of the most vital art forms for today. The Obstinate Object: Contemporary New Zealand Sculpture calls together recent New Zealand sculpture which foregrounds the making of and engagement with objects and object-ness as central to the experience of the medium. The artists in this exhibition rework conventional sculptural modes and materials, insisting that sculpture is something to be made and physically encountered by its audience in real space and real time.

Spilling out of City Gallery into its non-spaces, surrounds and the city, The Obstinate Object brings together recent work by some of New Zealand’s most compelling artists. Working in a variety of sculptural modes, with a wide range of materials and concerns, each reinforces the ‘object-ness’ of sculpture as a pressing concern. Questioning the increasingly blurred line between sculpture, installation and performance, this exhibition empowers the sculptural object at a time when the value of objects is under constant scrutiny.

I also caught Heather Straka @ Paige Blackie, The Horrorscope show @ Enjoy, Irene Ferguson @ Suite (on Cuba St), Andrew McLeod @ Peter McLeavey, Warwick Freeman @ Bowen Galleries and the inaugural group show at a new space on Cuba St. called the Ramsey Mortimer Gallery. Hamish McKay Galley and Robert Heald were closed/installing and the Dowse Art Museum was only half open, which was a disappointment.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

I was very pleased to be asked by Neon CHocolate to participate in their anniversary show at .HBC in Berlin.

From the press release:

In its almost two years of existence, Neonchocolate Gallery introduced Berlin in quick succession to exiting works by young national and international artists.

Now the gallery is truly turning up the heat with the exhibition .COMPRESSED – a collection of one hundred handpicked works of urban art, painting, photography, illustration, collage, and design – which will be on view at Berlin’s .HBC March 5–8, 2012 and culminate in a live auction. The exhibition is curated by Oliver Thoben and Uwe Neu in cooperation with Kat Wilhelm, formerly of Christie’s London. Fares Al Hasan (www.fly-auctions.com), a licensed art auctioneer and collector who has conducted over forty successful auctions to date, will lead the final evening.

The auction and preceding exhibition .COMPRESSED will be held at .HBC Berlin, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 9.